Sharks have confident goalie for clash with Kings

SAN JOSE -- In hindsight, defenseman Dan Boyle had reason to think that Sharks goalie Antti Niemi was about to elevate his game before the season even started.

Boyle and Niemi were among the players who stayed in the Bay Area during the NHL lockout, renting ice to keep in shape. Niemi did leave for a month to play in his native Finland, and when he returned, he brought his longtime goalie coach with him for extra training.

"They were doing funky things out there on the ice, bringing in weights and doing all sorts of weird things," Boyle said last week. "From when he left to the time he came back, it was just harder to score on him."

That proved to be the case all season.

The Sharks open their second-round Stanley Cup playoff series tonight in Los Angeles and Niemi deserves much of the credit for the fact San Jose reached the post-season in the first place.

While the rest of the team was riding a roller coaster of highs and lows, Niemi was rock solid - finishing with 24 wins that tied him for the NHL lead, a career-best 2.16 goals against average and recognition as a Vezina Trophy finalist for the first time

Hampered by knee problems in 2011-12, Niemi knew he had to work extra hard in the off-season to regain agility and strength. That happened, but ask him now what the biggest difference is in his play and he'll mention something else.

"Being able to be confident, patient -- I think that's the biggest thing," he said before the team headed to Southern California.

The confidence, he added, comes from "being healthy, working hard and not worrying about anything that I can't do anything about it. Having a short memory about everything, too. I've been trying to do it for a long time and I get better at it."

All part of the evolution of a 29-year-old netminder who won the Stanley Cup with the Chicago Blackhawks at 26, then found himself in a new environment in San Jose.

Wayne Thomas, the Sharks assistant general manager who doubles as a goalie coach, credits "the maturity of his game" for Niemi's improved play.

"As goalies get older, they get the ability to read plays and are ahead of the game a little bit more," Thomas said. "So he knows the shooters, he knows the game more. There's not a lot of guess to his game."

That maturity also manifests itself in rebound control, Thomas said.

"All the goalies at this level make the first save very well," he said. "If you can control rebounds and eliminate second shots, you're at an elite level - which he is."

Ask his teammates about Niemi and they immediately talk about how hard he works, how he competes on every shot - game or practice. That trait hasn't gone unnoticed elswhere.

"There are better goaltenders technique-wise than him and there always will be, but I always go back to how hard he competes," said Kelly Hrudey, former NHL goalie and current TV analyst for Hockey Night in Canada. "That's why he has so much success.

"The key," added Hrudey, whose final two seasons were with the Sharks, "is how he battles back there and that's contagious."

But before Niemi could become the goalie he is today, he had health issues to overcome.

Surgery to remove a cyst near his knee just before the start of training camp in 2011 kept Niemi out of all exhibition games as well as the first three of the regular season. Even when he returned, his routine was disrupted.

"He was more in a recovery mode after games," Thomas said, "not a preparatory mode."

And the knee continued to present problems. It slowed him down. When out of position, he took longer to recover.

"It was the same thing still bothering me," Niemi said. "There was nothing new, but there was no time to focus on getting the leg stronger. If we had time, we would have liked to get it stronger first, and then focus on playing, but we had to start playing right away."

An off-season extended by a lockout worked in Niemi's favor.

"People who first got to know him when he came into the league and went on a cup run, his legs were a huge part of his game - his quickness and recovery and his ability to make second saves with his legs," Thomas said. "And that's back."

Adam Burish, the Sharks forward who is out for the Los Angeles series with an upper body injury, was a teammate of Niemi's the year the Blackhawks won the cup. He sees one significant difference between the goalie then and now.

"The other night he and I had dinner and we were talking," Burish said late in the season. "He said, 'The year I won the cup, Adam, I don't think it really sunk in for a long time that I was the starting goalie on a Stanley Cup championship team. I never pictured myself being there."